Malvina Kaplan

Buried alive in Auschwitz, 1961-1962
Oil on canvas
79x79 cm.

Malvina Kaplan (Poland, 1913 – Israel, 1987)

Born in Lodz, to the Kaminer family. In 1937, she commenced her studies at the Warsaw Academy of Arts. Following the outbreak of the war in 1939, she was forced to leave her studies. In 1940, she married Moshe Kaplan and they moved to Czestochowa, whence they were deported to the ghetto. Just before the ghetto’s liquidation, they managed to get forged documents, and under assumed identities as Poles they went to Germany, where they worked on an agricultural property, and in a factory. Malvina’s Jewish identity was discovered, and in 1944, she was transported to Auschwitz, and from there to Ravensbrück and Malchow. In spring 1945, she was transferred to Sweden, under the aegis of the Red Cross in Count Bernadotte’s rescue operation. There she was reunited with her husband. In 1947, the couple immigrated to Israel. Malvina studied at the Avni Institute of Art and Design, and was a member of the Israel Association of Painters and Sculptors.